Gravestone
by hallowedmaiden
Summary: Death is an abstract concept, a whisper among the trees, a strange thing that floats about on the wisps of wind, the only real truth of life, and in the grim reality, the only thing that matters in the end, because death eventually takes everyone, even the man she loved. Sparrabeth, done for a prompt on Tumblr. Character death.


**Saw a prompt on Tumblr to write about the reaction that one half of an OTP has to the other half dying. This is what I came up with.**

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Death was all around her, it had become a constant presence within the decaying wood of the ships, worming its way into the voices of all who spoke, stealing smiles where there would have been plenty, making even the finest feast taste like ash. It was such a stark unforgiving thing, responsible for the thievery of fragile whimsical emotions, but when comparing something like happiness to _nothingness_ , a person has to wonder whether being happy is even real, or if it something that the mind conjures, a figment, _a smokescreen_ to defend against the looming reminder that _everything_ dies, sometimes swift, a well-aimed bullet between the eyes, sometimes with long cruel torture, a slow drip of poison down the throat, or if mercy makes a visit, a quiet death during the sweet escape of sleep.

It held fast as something so unavoidable since the beginning of time, concrete in its place as the only truth of life, while humans built upon ideas, advanced with new technologies, forged new paths in the world, they all came to the same ending, arrived at the same peak, where everything they had ever done, every thought they had ever entertained, all _essence_ of them, was erased, wiped off the earth as though they had never even existed, _gone_ on a wisp of wind like the smoke from a dying fire.

 _At least_ , to the deceased. To the unfortunate souls that they left behind, their presence would _never_ leave. It insinuated itself into the deepest recesses of the mind, behaving as though a sickness might, taking control, influencing every breath until it becomes a struggle, sending a constant pain behind the eyes, the threat of salty unwelcome tears, and _no one's_ ever told about the physical pain, the sharp _ache_ that settles into the bones, wraps itself around the heart like a vice, turns the blood into ice when all that the mourning want to do is _forget_ the horror of loss for even just one blessed moment.

Eyes had been watching her from afar, deconstructing her like she was a feral animal teetering on the edge, primed to fly into a rage at any moment, some even going as far as to whisper to each other about her dethroning as if she was no longer _fit_ to rule. The very thought made her lip curl up into a bitter smile every time it paraded through the thorn-filled thicket that her mind had become, but when the ice cold feeling of helplessness bloomed within her, she gave in, accepted that perhaps they were _right_.

At the same time, they acted like they sympathized with her, like they _understood_ what it was that ailed her, what it was that was going to surely kill her with her nonexistent attempts to even lift a finger to fight it. They were all _fools_ , blind to the extent that the pain had changed her very matter, _broken and rebuilt her_ as something twisted, a pale imitation of what she once was, a proud ruler, a warrior of freedom, a _Pirate King_.

Who was she now? A widow, doomed to sink further and further into herself in the musty vestiges of her little house, the darkness turning into her own personal hell, playing tricks on her mind, threatening to upset the very fabric of her reality? A wraith, sweeping around the city like slithering smoke, making the world around her darker with every step she took? Or a sad little girl, consumed only by the thoughts of what it meant to lose something that was loved so fully, so completely, that when it was ripped away from her, it snatched part of her soul along with it?

It didn't really matter which identity she chose for herself, any one of them held as little weight to her now as anything. She didn't even remember how to smile, and she had tried the other night, then became angry, a kind of simmering, when it only came out as a hollow grimace. She didn't remember how to feel happy, how to feel sad, how to feel confusion, how to feel proud, it was a constant battle to dredge up the memory of how to feel at _all_ , as though it was some kind of long forgotten skill or a muscle that hadn't moved in ages, dead and shriveled up.

 _It will get better_ they all said, with their own teary eyes gazing at her, their own grief plainly shown on their faces, but she wondered how much of it was real, how much they really cared if they truly believed that recovery, that the strange foreign concept of _healing_ , was a possibility for her. Healing was something that people with scuffed knees did, something that people with _hope_ did, something that people who had something to _heal for_ did. Not her, she had _nothing_ , not anymore.

It _wasn't better_ , it was never going to _be better_ , not when the wound was this deep, not when it burned and tore at her heart like a knife on fire, not when it made her dizzy with the pain that swam through her head, not when it finally made her numb during the dark hours of the night after hours of screaming and crying where no one could hear her.

 _Everything_ , every color, every sound, every smell was a constant reminder of how much she wouldn't mind if _death_ swept down and chose her for its next victim. She would reach up, offering herself to it, pleading with it to take her away from the wasteland that her existence was now.

The black of the sky, the black of the water at night, the black of the crow's feathers as they flew by her, the black on the hilt of her sword, they all reminded her of the smooth kohl around his dancing eyes, always glittering at her, holding a secret, or a promise of pleasure, or even the glimmer of love that he had reserved _only_ for her.

Her bed sheets, a crimson red, were the same color as the damned bandanna around his head, but she had tried to convince herself since she had noticed that the shade was off, that it was just slightly too dark, that it had _absolutely nothing to do with him_. Fruitless attempts, she had discovered, because the mind, her mind, wanted nothing to do with forgetting him, wasn't even inclined to _try_.

Every voice she heard slid into her ears and transformed into _his voice_ , like a dream that she had no control over as it slipped and wound around all logical reason, twisted everything for its own sordid pleasure. _His voice_ , the whisper of sultry words in her ear as his body covered hers with the most exquisite husk that always sent fire deep into her loins, _his voice_ , holding the musical quality of a master storyteller, conjuring and painting images with his inflections, _his voice_ , soothing her turmoil with beautiful softness, combined in tandem with strokes of his fingers across her cheek, over her neck, swiping across her skin just under her eye to collect tears. She had loved that voice, cherished it, worshipping the ability it had to turn even her most wild moments of extremity, of rage, of sorrow, into a serene calm, as though that was the only thing she had _ever_ felt in her life.

She hadn't been on his ship since that first time, _after_ , because every _fucking_ thing, the earthy smell of the wood, the fresh sweet tang of the sea water, the swaying of her body, the majestic sails, the pool of memories, even the union she felt with the very meaning of life, all felt like a cruel audience, designed only to taunt her and tear her down, pick at her until she could just disintegrate with a gust of wind.

Each breath she took carried the question of _why_ with it, each time she lifted her body out of bed, not _their_ bed, she hadn't been able to even go near their bed, because if she tried, she might as well just end her own life on the threshold of the bedroom as a mercy to herself. Her muscles ached with protest, every word that she struggled to form was half-spoken, as though she just couldn't put forth the full effort required to form the sounds.

The first couple of times, after she had miraculously gained the presence of mind to perform even the simplest of tasks, she had tried to be angry with him, tried to blame it on him. If only he would have moved slightly to the right, if only he had blocked just a _little_ faster, if only...if only he had been a little less focused on protecting her, if only...if only he could have just gained the power to stop death in its tracks.

But even the great pirate captain couldn't do that. A flash of a blade, a split second of error was all it had taken, but that second, that monumental _horror_ had felt like a cruel lifetime to her, turning her heart into a racing mad thing, ripping a scream from her throat even as she had launched herself forward, _sprinting_ across the deck, skittering to a stumbling halt next to him, her entire life narrowing, all movement around her ceasing to exist. She had pressed her hands into his chest, cried and yelled, most of it nonsense, she had tried to stop all of the blood, but there was so much of it, streaming across her hands, soaking into his coat, his shirt, flowing freely like the life that was quickly leaving him. In that moment, she had felt like she was limited to crawling across the ground tasked with keeping up with a musket shot as it sailed through the air.

There _was nothing_ that she could have done, nothing that could have stopped it, nothing that could have prevented the final gurgle that twisted in his throat, the final twitch of his eyelids, and she still remembered the hysterics that she had descended into when the hand that she had gripped so tightly lost all responsiveness, becoming dead weight in her fist. The battle had lost all meaning to her, every single person on the ship might have tried to attack her but she had no memory of it, because the only memory that was burned into her mind was his pale skin, his body, normally so filled with life, lying there, nothing but a shell.

She remembered the hysterics because they had never left, they had become a constant passenger within her, flashing back through her with a vengeance every time the images chose to torture her again.

 _Why did it have to be him_?

She would give _anything_ , anything that was demanded of her, anything she had the power to relinquish, just to see him again, just to see his gold smile again, just to feel his strong arms wrapped around her, just to know that he was alive.

But the truth, the final truth, the only real truth was that he wasn't. And it had only started to really sink in, really find a home inside of her heart, like a type of poison, when she had finally scraped the last fragments of strength, if she could even assign the word _strength_ to it, to make the long journey to his grave.

He had asked her one night after several rounds of tender love making if he could be buried on the beach, just at the edge of the trees, and she had grown angry with him, burned by even the idea that he was capable of leaving her, because she had convinced herself that he was immortal, _invincible_. After his insistence on calming her down with sweet kisses, gentle circles with his fingers on her back, whispered promises that he would do all he could do to stay with her, she had agreed, reluctantly, to his wishes.

It was only her third time here, her third time staring at the physical reminder of what her mind was tearing itself apart to avoid thinking about, and yet this, this ritual, feeling the fresh ocean air rush past her as she knelt in the sand, hearing the noises of the night, the breaking and receding of the water in the distance, the creak of the ships as they rocked back and forth off the shoreline, was the _only_ thing that made sense to her anymore, the only thing that kept her tethered to reality.

She reached out, hesitating for only a second, before touching her fingers to the rocky surface of his gravestone, rough to the touch, yet smooth, and fresh tears immediately stung at her eyes, before spilling down her cheeks, and she had learned very quickly that it was a waste of time and effort to try and stop them, since they tended to take on a life of their own, each one holding a thousand pieces of her, of him, of the world that they had shared, of how damn much she had _loved him_.

Sand flowed against her legs as she scooted closer, reminding her of the behavior of shallow water, and for the first time, she leaned down to touch her forehead to his grave, rocking it back and forth, as though she could somehow summon him forth from sheer will alone.

The urge to say something, to try and put language to the torment in her mind, consumed her in that moment, and she felt like he was somehow there, listening to her, aching to comfort her, aching to put a stop to the acute _pain_ that she was feeling.

Her jaw ached when she opened her mouth, and her throat still had the same scratchiness that it was plagued with... _since._ But she found strength from some unknown source, some as yet undiscovered vestige inside of her, to make her voice work again.

"I _hate_ everything without you- _damn it_ , why did you-" she paused to fight down the choking, the closing up of her throat. "Why _did you have to leave me_?"

"I'm supposed to be a King, an example for everyone, but I can't...I can't do anything, can't care about anything without you, Jack. Nothing-" and then the tears invaded her voice, turning it into a watery gurgle, but she forged ahead, " _nothing matters anymore_. _Why did you have to go…_ "

It was all she could manage, all she could get out before her thoughts turned into a jumbled mess, swimming through her head, the commanding gravity of _loss_ releasing its full weight upon her.

She didn't know how long she knelt there and cried, _screamed_ , then cried some more, cried until her head threatened to split open with pain, until her very muscles ached with the shuddering until she no longer _knew_ anything, no longer had the function to _know_ , to _understand_ , to _care_.

' _I love you, Jack'_ was the last thought, the last _anything_ that her mind produced, before the black nothingness of exhaustion washed through her, sending her sliding to the sand in a heap, devoid of the ability to care whether she was sleeping, dreaming, caught in limbo, or _even dead_.

Her consciousness blinked away, before being extinguished completely like a candle going out, and she did dream, but of what, she didn't know.


End file.
